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ABSTRACT
In the early years of the twentieth century, city administrators in Halifax, Nova Scotia articulated a new, modern identity for the former imperial garrison town by identifying the local red light district as both a moral and a spatial problem. Between the twilight of Victoria’s reign and Britain’s entry into the First World War, middle-class toleration of a local sex district as a means of managing the city’s populations of imperial servicemen virtually evaporated. Haligonians were inspired instead by North American urban modernisation initiatives to eradicate this visible and physical space for the world’s oldest profession. This paper examines shifting responses to the imperial sexual and political ideologies underpinning collective toleration of Halifax’s racially mixed sex district, offers a case study of this crucial moment of civic refashioning.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Laurie Bertram, Dr Todd McCallum and this journal’s anonymous referees for their invaluable contributions in developing and refining this work.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ‘There Should Be No “Tenderloin” District in Halifax’, Halifax Herald, 18 Dec. 1907, 4.
2. ‘Blots upon the Community that Should be Wiped Out’, Halifax Herald, 29 Dec. 1907, 3.
3. Levine, ‘“A Multitude”’, 159–60; Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 1; Lee, Policing Prostitution, 5. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 71–73.
4. Fingard, Guildford and Sutherland, Halifax, 11.
5. Boudreau, City of Order, 135. Ruth Rosen has detected a similar shift in middle-class attitudes regarding prostitution during the American Progressive Era (1900–18). During this period, Americans came to view what had previously been seen as a ‘necessary evil’ as the country’s greatest ‘“Social Evil,” a moral problem and a national menace.’ Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, xi.
6. As historians including Timothy Gilfoyle, Françoise Barret-Ducrocq, Andrée Lévesque and Nina Atwood have observed, prostitutes often figured in middle-class discourse as ‘metaphors of modernity’ or as iconic members of the ‘dangerous classes’. Gilfoyle, ‘Prostitutes in History’, 117–41; Barret-Ducrocq, Love in the Time of Victoria, 36–37; Lévesque, Making and Breaking, 62; Atwood, The Prostitute’s Body.
7. ‘Demand a Decent Street’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 1.
8. According to the Morning Chronicle, hapless passersby, including children, ‘are not only obliged to listen to profane and obscene language but are liable to be solicited to enter these houses’. ‘Demand a Decent Street’, Morning Chronicle 1 Dec. 1898, 1; ‘The Haunts of Vice’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 5.
9. ‘The Haunts of Vice’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 5.
10. Morton, ‘Separate Spheres’, 61–83.
11. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 38, 104.
12. Morton, ‘Separate Spheres’, 75.
13. ‘Demand a Decent Street’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 1; ‘The Haunts of Vice’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 5.
14. ‘The Haunts of Vice’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 5.
15. Fingard, Guildford and Sutherland, Halifax, 98.
16. According to Judith Fingard, in the nineteenth century, sailors in the Royal Navy ‘visited the port by the hundreds and sometimes thousands during the summer months; and British soldiers numbering between 2000 and 4000’ were stationed in the city throughout the year. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 17.
17. Boudreau, City of Order, 135; Backhouse, ‘Nineteenth-Century Canadian Prostitution Law’, 387, 390–92.
18. ‘Demand a Decent Street’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 1; ‘The General to Co-operate’, Morning Chronicle, 2 Dec. 1898, 5.
19. Acadian Recorder, 13 May 1870, 2; Acadian Recorder, 12 May 1873, 2.
20. Lee, Policing Prostitution, 5, 8; Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 72–73.
21. While not dealing with a garrison town, Philip Howell considers how the University of Cambridge regulated prostitution in the area surrounding the university by attempting to ‘isolate, segregate, and domesticate prostitution activity’. Howell, ‘Private Contagious Diseases Act’, 376–402. In the Indian context, Stephen Legg has argued that British prostitution policy in India before the first Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in 1923 attempted to regulate soldiers’ access to prostitutes by confining prostitution to segregated districts. Legg, ‘Simulation, Segregation and Scandal’, 1459–1505. Philippa Levine similarly notes that, while the British Contagious Diseases Acts separated prostitution out from the economy and civic space around garrison towns, the Indian Cantonment Act of 1865 organised prostitution within military cantonments as part of the urban landscape surrounding military stations. Levine, ‘Venereal Disease’, 579–602. See also Wald, ‘Health, Discipline and Appropriate Behaviour’, 815–56.
22. A Canadian Contagious Diseases Act was introduced in Upper and Lower Canada in 1865, but never applied to Nova Scotia. The Canadian legislation expired in 1870 without ever having been put into practice. Backhouse, ‘Nineteenth-Century Canadian Prostitution Law’, 390, 392.
23. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 111. The chief of police stated in city council that he and the mayor had made a tour of Brunswick Street and found nothing untoward. ‘The Haunts of Vice’, Morning Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1898, 1.
24. Speaking before city council in 1912, Mayor Frederick Bligh observed retrospectively that, as a result of Mayor Hamilton’s actions in 1907, ‘[t]he inmates of a couple of houses of ill-repute were changed from Brunswick to Albemarle and Grafton Street’. Halifax City Council Minutes, Social Evil and Temperance Law Enforcement, 7 Nov. 1912, 329–38, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives (hereafter HMA), online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
25. Erickson, Westward Bound, 82.
26. Ross, ‘Sex’, 198.
27. Erickson, Westward Bound, 81.
28. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 96.
29. Fingard, ‘Masters and Friends’, 45–46; Sager, Seafaring Labour, 253; Boudreau, City of Order, 136.
30. Nicholson, ‘Dreaming of “the Perfect City”’, 22.
31. Boudreau, City of Order, 136.
32. Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, 1.
33. As Leslie Ann Jeffrey and Gayle Macdonald observe, much knowledge about prostitution has been produced by community outsiders, including state authorities and academic researchers. Knowledge generated in these contexts, they argue, is inherently distorted; it is produced by a ‘so-called straight society’ that continually seeks to assert its interpretative authority over individuals involved in the sex trade who, by definition, ‘cannot be knowers’. Jeffrey and Macdonald, Sex Workers, 1, 3.
34. Hinther, ‘The Oldest Profession’, par. 14; Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 105. Lesley Erickson argues in her work on the criminal justice system in the Canadian West that historians who draw upon legal sources as evidence must acknowledge that they are, by definition, ‘fragmentary records generated by state officials … in order to categorize and assess a population’. In spite of the epistemological limitations associated with the study of sex work through legal sources, I share with Erickson the belief that court records can do much to restore agency to sex workers by illuminating not only their adoption of rhetorical strategies before the court but also their use of the criminal justice system to meet their own needs. Erickson, Westward Bound, 13, 7.
35. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 25.
36. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 17, 24; Nicholson, ‘Dreaming of “the Perfect City”’, 18.
37. When recording the offences committed by individuals in their nightly charge books, officers sometimes made note of the fact that the transgression, often public drunkenness or disorderliness, took place ‘near Albemarle Street’, suggesting that such disturbances were a commonplace occurrence in the area. Night Charge Book July 1902–Oct. 1903, Halifax Police Department Charge Books 1882–1908, 102–16A, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
38. Stansell, City of Women, 64. Historians have begun to situate red light activities within the working-class communities in which they were so often located. Ruth Rosen was one of the first historians to note that red light districts often overlapped with, but did not overwhelm, working-class neighbourhoods. Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, 78. In the case of Montreal’s infamous red light district, Mary Ann Poutanen suggests that ‘it is more accurate to think of concentrations of red-light activities rather than of districts to which it was confined’. Poutanen, Beyond Brutal Passions, 36.
39. McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory for 1900–1901, 123, 124, 126, 148, 266, 221, 225, 264.
40. Ibid., 81, 91, 594–95.
41. Lévesque, ‘Le Bordel’, 15–16; Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 34–35. Several large groupings of unrelated individuals residing at the same addresses on Albemarle are registered in the Halifax city directories between 1900 and 1915. See McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory for 1900–1901, 594–95; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1909, 606–07; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1910, 622–23; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory, 1911, 638–39; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory, 1912, 678–79; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory, 1913, 742–43; McAlpine’s Nova Scotia Directory, 1914, 69–70; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory, 1915, 69–70.
42. For Montreal, see Lévesque, ‘Le Bordel’, 20; Lacasse, La prostitution; Lapointe, Nettoyer Montréal. For Winnipeg, see Hinther, ‘The Oldest Profession’, par. 1. For an analysis of unofficial regulatory systems in the frontier cities of the Canadian West, see Erickson, Westward Bound. For policing in Victoria, British Columbia, see Dunae, ‘Geographies of Sexual Commerce’, 123.
43. McLaren, ‘Chasing the Social Evil’, 147.
44. Historians have identified two significant shifts in popular conceptions of criminality in Halifax in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, Judith Fingard has detected a class-based shift in perceptions of crime in Victorian Halifax. The second half of the nineteenth century saw, according to Fingard, an escalation in the moral, municipal and legal interventions made by middle-class Haligonians into the lives of the garrison town’s criminal ‘underclass’. Michael Boudreau’s more recent work on Halifax between 1918 and 1935 suggests that the city’s ‘vigilant pursuit of law and order’ in this period responded to the destabilising social and economic transformations wrought by the postwar ‘storms of modernity’. The years leading up to the First World War represent, then, a crucial and yet under-studied moment in the history of crime, prostitution, and law and order in Halifax. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 10, 12; Boudreau, City of Order, 3, 5.
45. In September 1905, for example, Mary Jane Collins was charged with being a resident of a disorderly house only after Henry de Montreau, perhaps her client, accused her of theft. Interestingly, de Montreau also charged Owen Higgins with theft. Higgins was then brought before the magistrate for frequenting a disorderly house. Police may have penalised Collins and Higgins for failing to keep their activities outside the police court. 15 Sept. 1905, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
46. Borden was charged with lewd conduct and being drunk in the city on 11 June 1904. On 14 June, police charged her with keeping a common bawdy house as well. Inglefoot was brought before the court for public drunkenness on 10 Nov. 1903. On 18 November, she was charged with being an inmate of a disorderly house. Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
47. 21 Feb. 1902, ibid.
48. 30 Jan. 1902, 29 March 1902, 4 March 1905, ibid.
49. Judith Walkowitz notes that prostitution and alcohol consumption were perceived to be linked as illicit male recreations. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 23–24. Social purity feminists also championed both the abolition of prostitution and temperance causes. See Bland, Banishing the Beast, 98. For an interesting analysis of the women’s movement against drinking and prostitution in mining towns, see Laite, ‘Historical Perspectives’, 739–61.
50. ‘Does Halifax Need Fifty Bar-Rooms’, Evening Mail, 14 Oct. 1912, 4.
51. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 26; Fingard, ‘“A Great Big Rum Shop”’, 98.
52. Annie Blakley, for example, was charged with keeping a disorderly house one week after appearing in court for violating the Liquor Licensing Act. 25 June 1904, 2 July 1904, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HRA.
53. McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1900, 455.
54. 17 March 1902, 4 Feb. 1902, 18 Aug. 1902, 11 April 1903, 4 June 1903, 3 Aug. 1903, 28 Sept. 1905, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA; 3 Aug. 1902, 29 Sept. 1902, 22 Feb. 1908, April 6 1908, Halifax Police Department Charge Books, 1882–1908, 102–16A, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
55. The 1901 Canadian Census lists a black woman by the name of ‘Sarah Shepard’, living in ward three in Halifax. 1901 Census of Canada Database, Library and Archives Canada, http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/1901/z/z001/pdf/z000039833.pdf.
56. 3 Nov. 1902, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA. Given that Thorsen is a Scandinavian surname, it is worth noting that sailors from Scandinavian ships were often the victims of this kind of ‘crimping’ in Halifax. Fingard, ‘Masters and Friends’, 28.
57. 1 Oct 1902, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
58. Blair, I’ve Got to Make my Livin’, 51, 77.
59. 3 Nov 1902, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA. 1901 Census of Canada Database, Library and Archives Canada, http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/1901/z/z001/pdf/z000040094.pdf.
60. 26 April 1905, 1 Aug. 1905, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 78.
61. McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1909, 607; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1910, 622; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1911, 638; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1912, 678; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1913, 742; McAlpine’s Nova Scotia Directory 1914, 70; McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory 1915, 69. Interestingly, Shepherd is not listed as a resident at this address.
62. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 104–05.
63. Morton, ‘Separate Spheres’, 75.
64. Ibid., 61.
65. Tambe, ‘Brothels as Families’, 219. For Judith Walkowitz, the symbolic significance of the Victorian prostitute resides in her transgression of the spatial boundaries of the city, moving alone as a ‘female grotesque’ outside the feminised domain of the home and into the masculine public sphere. Carolyn Strange also argues that the ‘rise of the single woman’ in Toronto’s urban space prompted anxious investigations into the potential for these new wage earners to venture into prostitution. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, 22; Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem, 3, 18, 29.
66. Poutanen, Beyond Brutal Passions, 278.
67. Poutanen, ‘Pigs, Cows, Boarders’, 79–80. See Bradbury, Working Families.
68. William and Mary Thomas, Peter and Victoria Apezechia, Joseph and Agnes Cole, and Rachel and Edward Stoutley were all charged jointly for operating brothels. 31 Jan. 1902, 4 April 1903, 4 June 1904, 2 June 1905, 6 June 1905, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
69. ‘List of Aliens’, 638, Library and Archives Canada, http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/cgc/nat/lowres/P29-30_638.pdf.
70. 27 Jan 1902, 24 Feb 1902, 15 Nov. 1902, 11 Oct. 1905, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
71. Backhouse, ‘Nineteenth-Century Canadian Prostitution Law’, 389.
72. Bright, ‘The Other Woman’, 108.
73. 23 Nov. 1903, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
74. 17 Nov 1903, ibid.
75. 3 and 6 Oct. 1903, ibid.
76. 4 and 14 April, 1903, ibid. 1901 Census of Canada Database, Library and Archives Canada, http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/1901/z/z001/pdf/z000036714.pdf.
77. 2 April 1903, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
78. 6 June 1905, ibid.
79. 31 March 1902, 4 Oct. 1902, ibid.
80. Erickson, Westward Bound, 41.
81. 21 Jan 1902, 11 Feb 1902, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
82. Unlike Shepherd, Adolph and Margaret Hornstein were able to pay sizeable fines (60 and 40 dollars respectively) for brothel-keeping. Other women convicted of public nuisance or prostitution charges, on the other hand, often opted for prison time over forfeiting penalties ranging from one to six dollars. 7 Feb. 1902, 17 April 1902, 2 Nov. 1903, Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
83. Backhouse, ‘Nineteenth-Century Canadian Prostitution Law’, 396.
84. Tremeer, Canadian Criminal Cases, 466.
85. Morris, Dangerous Classes, 1–4. See Tamara Myers on the interpretative distinctions between the social control paradigm and more Foucauldian moral regulation studies. Myers, Caught, 12. In the British context, Frances Finnegan’s study of prostitution in Victorian York, based on her reading of penitentiary and poor law records, is a classic study written from this perspective. Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution. In the Canadian context, Fingard defines Halifax’s underclass as ‘members of minority racial and ethnic groups [who] struggled for survival and were largely denied the opportunity for a decent existence’. Fingard, ‘Kellum, Henry’.
86. Sangster, Regulating Girls and Women, 86
87. Lee, Policing Prostitution, 38, 57; Hinther, ‘The Oldest Profession’, par. 3; Poutanen, Beyond Brutal Passions, 9–10, 15, 316.
88. Thirty-two individuals involved with prostitution-related charges appeared more than once in the Police Court Record Book between 1902 and 1905, while 38 appeared only once. Halifax Police Department Court Record Book, 1900–05, 102–16K, City of Halifax fonds, HMA.
89. Boudreau, City of Order, 6.
90. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 140; Crofts, Hubbard and Prior, ‘Policing, Planning and Sex’, 52.
91. Crofts, Hubbard and Prior, ‘Policing, Planning and Sex’, 55; see also Hubbard, ‘Cleansing the Metropolis’, 1687–1702; Hubbard and Sanders, ‘Making Space’, 75–89; Hubbard and Whowell, ‘Revisiting’, 1743–55.
92. Ross, ‘Sex’, 199, 202.
93. Nicholson, ‘Dreaming of “the Perfect City”’,49; see also Grant, Vissers and Haney, ‘Early Town Planning’, 4.
94. Proposition Alderman Clarke re improvement of a portion of the City, Halifax City Council Minutes, 8 Feb. 1912, 293–94, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives Online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
95. Ibid.
96. Nicholson, ‘Dreaming of “the Perfect City”’, 22.
97. Bishop-Green, ‘Designating Heritage Buildings’, 66.
98. ‘Comprehensive Plan for Future Development of Halifax has Unanimous Support of Public’, Morning Chronicle, 9 Feb. 1912, 6.
99. Cahill, ‘Mackintosh, James Crosskill’.
100. Proposition Alderman Clarke re improvement of a portion of the City, Halifax City Council Minutes, 8 Feb. 1912, 293–94, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives Online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
101. Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem, 39. For an engaging analysis of the history of the Canadian liberal state, see McKay, ‘The Liberal Order Framework’, 617–45.
102. Valverde, The Age of Light, 27, 32.
103. Erickson, Westward Bound, 22.
104. Halifax City Directory 1900, 19. ‘“Quiet Methods” and the Tenderloin’, Evening Mail, 17 Oct. 1912, 1.
105. ‘Comprehensive Plan for Future Development of Halifax has Unanimous Support of Public’, Morning Chronicle, 9 Feb. 1912, 6.
106. ‘Moral Urgency of Scientific City Planning’, Morning Chronicle, 6 Feb. 1912, 5.
107. ‘“Quiet Methods” and the Tenderloin’, Evening Mail, 17 Oct. 1912, 1.
108. ‘Houses Must Close’, Acadian Recorder, 8 Nov. 1912, 2; Erickson, Westward Bound, 88–89.
109. ‘“Quiet Methods” and the Tenderloin’, Evening Mail, 17 Oct. 1912, 6.
110. ‘“The Social Evil”: The Subject of a Strong Sermon’, Evening Mail, 14 Oct. 1912, 1, 6.
111. ‘Houses of Ill Repute Must Go from Halifax Says Council’, Halifax Herald, 9 Nov. 1912, 6, 8.
112. Forbes, ‘Prohibition’, 24; Halifax City Council Minutes, Social Evil and Temperance Law Enforcement, 7 Nov. 1912, 329–38, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives (HMA), online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
113. Valverde and Wilson, ‘Shearer, John George’.
114. Valverde, The Age of Light, 56–57.
115. Social Evil and Temperance Law Enforcement, Halifax City Council Minutes, 7 Nov. 1912, 329–38, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives (HMA), online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
116. Ibid.
117. Valverde and Wilson, ‘Shearer, John George’.
118. Social Evil and Temperance Law Enforcement, Halifax City Council Minutes, 7 Nov. 1912, 329–38, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives (HMA), online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
119. ‘Houses Must Close’, Acadian Recorder, 8 Nov. 1912, 2.
120. Grant, Vissers and Haney, ‘Early Town Planning’, 8; Social Evil and Temperance Law Enforcement, Halifax City Council Minutes,7 Nov. 1912, 329–38, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives (HMA), online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
121. Report Chief of Police, Halifax City Council Minutes, 9 Jan 1913, 445–46, City of Halifax Council Minutes, 1841–1996, Halifax Municipal Archives Online, http://www.halifax.ca/archives/HalifaxCityMinutes/index.php.
122. ‘More Lights for Streets’, Acadian Recorder, 10 Jan. 1913, 2.
123. Police Chief Rudland’s report before city council in January 1913 was the last time Halifax’s red light district was discussed before council that year.
124. All five individuals are noted as living at the same addresses on Albemarle in the 1915 city directory. McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory, 1915, 69.
125. McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory, 1911, 638–39; ‘Halifax Market Site to be Cleared’, Halifax Herald, 19 Jan. 1912, 1.
126. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 25.
127. Boudreau, City of Order, 135–36.
128. Hall, Civilising Subjects; Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 3.